


and now we have a tomorrow

by peculiva



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Bipolar Ian Gallagher, Canon Compliant, M/M, Prostitution, Snippets
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-03
Updated: 2020-10-03
Packaged: 2021-03-07 21:27:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26784397
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peculiva/pseuds/peculiva
Summary: He dips his head, closes his eyes and inhales.Or: Me living out my love for Mickey Milkovich through the eyes of Ian Gallagher
Relationships: Ian Gallagher/Mickey Milkovich
Comments: 4
Kudos: 88





	and now we have a tomorrow

**Author's Note:**

> This is cheesy as hell and rushed, written in the dead of night because my longterm WIP ain't working at the moment and I was feeling too emotional.
> 
> No beta since I'm an impatient bitch and just as a heads up, English is not my first language so I'm sorry for the mistakes bound to happen.

Mickey's skin is hot beneath his hands. He's sliding them over Mickey's back, his fingers tracing the outline of his shoulder blades, dipping into the curves of his muscles where beads of sweat are pooling. There are lines on Mickey's back and Ian has seen too much not to know what they are. He brushes his thumb over a scar near Mickey's hip before he grips hard instead of gentle because this isn't a romantic getaway, this is fighting turned to fucking and it's beyond any kind of thrill Ian has experienced in his fifteen years on this earth.  
Mickey is gay, panting beneath him, biting his lip to keep quiet and Ian's brain hasn't really caught up yet with the situation but his dick has, which is enough for now.  
From the few lays he's had, this is the best one yet, by fucking miles. They don't talk, not like Ian does with Kash, or Roger Spikey who tried to talk dirty and lost focus of the matter at hand when they'd fucked around.  
This right here, right now, holding Mickey by the hips and pounding him, is something else. Words won't fit here. There's not enough space for them, it's all filled with a bruising hold, and heavy breaths and a smell that blocks out everything else. For a few minutes there is nothing but him and Mickey in this bed, their bodies touching in all the right wrong places, and when Ian lowers his head to Mickey's neck and breathes in as he comes, his sight and mind and core go fucking blurry.

He isn't surprised when Mickey backs away and threatens to cut his tongue out, as Ian dives in for a kiss afterwards, but it doesn't stop him from wanting to know what it would be like. He's smelled him. He went beneath the cover of grime, and sweat and cigarettes when he'd dove his nose into the crook of Mickey's neck and he found another layer, the essence that connected the other components and made something unique. Something Mickey.

Ian leaves with the gun tucked into his waistband, sporting a black eye and even though Mickey doesn't bother to look at him from the kitchen, Ian knows that this isn't over.

\---

There's something off about Mickey's smell, Ian senses even through the fog filling his head with joy and fun and fucking life. The snow they gave him tonight is good. It numbs the bass thumping through him, makes the lights around him flash that much brighter, makes this place better.  
Mickey is wearing a black button up with his hair gelled back and he's shouting in Ian's ear as Ian grinds against him, like he doesn't give a shit. Like he doesn't appreciate what Ian's doing to him right now and he smells too sweet, like something else is making his real smell, the one Ian has become addicted to, disappear beneath false cleanliness. Ian knows better.  
Mickey is filthy, covered in jizz and lies with Ian as his dirty little secret. Ian is used to it. It's never been any different and he used to be fine with it because he knew better. He knew the power he had over the people he made feel good, he still knows. They show him here, jaw going slack, cursing and sighing when Ian does things to them their wives never could, and they pay him with snow and other favors dissolving on his tongue and turning up the volume of the world.  
Mickey's wife could never do what Ian is offering him right now. She might change his smell, she might sleep in his bed but she won't get what Mickey gave to him. Mickey gave himself, to the point that Ian wondered when it all happened, how they got from fucking mid-fight and nearly missing tongues to watching movies together, making out for hours on the couch and "Missed ya.". But it didn't last.

Now Mickey is married and Ian has moved on and Mickey is making it fucking easy for him because he keeps prodding him about his family, acting all like he gives a shit and Ian sees it then. The pretense, the facade that Mickey wears, pretending like he cares, a false layer of empathy that's as wrong as his smell. If Ian meant anything to him, he wouldn't have gone and married the pregnant commie whore. He wouldn't have let him fuck him into oblivion right before the ceremony only to go through with it.

He's done. He's proud now, though that has never been the problem. The problem was people like Mickey who took his affection and took his heart, twisted it beyond recognition. It's better now and he has no desire to go back. He's free now, free to dance his limbs off every night, free to please men who appreciate him. Free to live.

Mickey leaves when Roger shows up and Ian is glad.

He wakes up on the floor of Mickey's bedroom, the whore towering over him with a belly ready to burst. Her words are scalding to his ears, too loud with a heavy accent and all he wants to do is curl up and sleep forever but he gets up and into the shower. He needs to wash it off. He slept in someone else's sheets and they smelled right.

\---

Ian tilts his head, leans in and inhales. He's lying on the cold hard metal floor of a van, pressed close to the warm, solid presence that matters, and he's breathing, for the first time in over a year and now that he remembers what it's like to live, he can't stop. Mickey smells like home. Like greasy chicken nuggets eaten right off the baking tray, like damp earth on a rainy fall day, like Whiskey and fire and blood. He dives deeper, into the space between Mickey's jaw and neck, burying his nose in black, too long hair. 

He comes with his tongue on Mickey's skin and his hand curled around his beanie and then he flips Mickey around. Watches his eyes go hazy and his lips part, gaze glazed over like he's high, and he is. High on Ian.  
When Mickey hooks his teeth into his lower lip, Ian's thumb pries them off. He wants to hear, needs to because it's not about smell.  
It's not about frantic gasps as Mickey collapses in Ian's arms, not about his eyes holding onto Ian's, bleeding trust. 

It's about all of it.  
About his voice, his face, his body. It's about the way his calloused hands turn gentle and about his rapid mouth that gives Ian whiplash, going from hostile to flirty to blatantly honestly telling Ian that he means the world to Mickey, in two seconds flat. It's about his decision to turn around for Ian, to be defenseless and vulnerable but trusting Ian to do it right. Even now.  
It's about showing him a calm street, about listening to memories whispered to him in rare moments in between, protected by the night and Ian's arm slung around Mickey's waist, about stealing each other's food and tasting blood when licking over a split lip. It is about this man inhaling the same air as him, before Ian closes the distance between their lips and for a while neither of them breathes.

\---

He can feel Mickey's heart breaking under his touch. It's not the first time but it will most likely be the last.

"Fuck you, Gallagher." 

He tears up when the gate lifts and he sobs into his fist during a break at a gas station on his way back to Chicago.

\---

They all make sure he's back to swallowing his pills. They all come to say goodbye, except Fiona which is a little worrying but by the time he hugs his brother goodbye and lets go before he truly loses it, he's a medically-balanced nutjob, instead of a loose one.  
He doesn't love it but he's seen the alternatives, all the various outcomes so far and none of them are flattering. Hell, it's landed him here, again, behind bars, yellow jumpsuits and prison tattoos. 

Mexico would have been a crazy but medicated decision, and might just been the better one.

The door behind him slides open and closed and when Ian turns around he comes home. 

\---

"You bein' weird again?" Mickey's voice is heavy with sleep but Ian doesn't miss the low rumble of laughter. He doesn't respond, just shuffles closer so he's curled around Mickey's body, touching him from head to toe, face hidden in the safe space under his jaw.  
Mickey's hand comes up around his neck and Ian can feel the slightly cooler metal of the ring on his skin. He does speak then but first he looks up, into Mickey's eyes, to see when he tells a truth he can no longer hold back.

"Mick, going to get that gun back was the best decision of my life."

**Author's Note:**

> As always, kudos and comments make my day. Any kind of feedback is appreciated, including yelling and taking this story apart.
> 
> Have a great day and thank you for reading!


End file.
